December 8th is the earth birthday of Sinéad O’Connor / Shuhada' Sadaqat who would have been 58 today. Since I wrote Fight The Real Terror inspired by her, I have watched many more interviews of Sinéad and in each, she remained incredibly soft spoken, funny, and honest while the interviewers 99% of the time followed a tired path in asking her to prove how happy and okay she was, in one manner or another questioning her mental health. How exhausting it must have been for her, but she needed music and in making music, needed to promote her work and she did so by enduring invasive questions and responding honestly in her quiet voice.
I have started singing her “Troy” this fall with trepidation. Generally I don’t like singing other people’s songs - the biggest reason is that it impossible not to be compared to the originator and unless one does a radically different interpretation, then the questions of Why Is This Necessary or How Does This Make New Meaning come to the fore. I don’t have anything to offer Troy. I have no new interpretation. What I can tell you is that I have needed to sing this for myself. There is a heart-on-sleeve transparency in its direct accusations, its loss, its jealousy, its determination to survive that I have needed to sing and didn’t know how to write myself. I admit to hiding behind metaphors. Trying to protect people around me. Not being able to write that openly about my feelings or experiences. Maybe it’s because I was a pastor’s kid and grew up in a kind of spotlight? I learned early that people shouldn’t know too much or you will suffer. So putting on the song-clothes of Sinéad has allowed me to access my own tenderness, bitterness, longing, jealousy, insecurity, fierceness, and yes vengeance in a single song in a way I probably won’t ever achieve myself. That’s okay. She left songs for me. For us. We get to try them on. We each have our writing specialties. Transparency is not mine. I will work my metaphors once again, but it has been her gift to me to be able to see what it feels like to let these emotions become visible.
Here is a clip of the first time I sang “Troy” in public at the Hult Center in Eugene, OR.
I will be performing “Troy” with string quintet, piano & drums in Detroit at the Detroit Institute of Arts this coming Friday, December 13th. The set starts at 7 and gulp, we play til 8:30. Free show, thanks to Detroit taxes.
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